Ordinarily when one hears the term rust applied to an electronic of any kind, a vision pops into your head of something old. Unfortunately, rust can actually happen on USB, HDMI or card reader ports for electronics even under a year old, given the right set of circumstances. The difference between rusting and tarnishing Tarnishing [...]
So, you’re thinking you need a new computer, hmm? As you probably well know, shopping for a new rig is nothing to sneeze at- it’s an involved, comprehensive process, one which involves a lot of searching, price comparison, research, and introspection. Well…it does if you do it right, anyway. See, a lot of folks approach [...]
Over the years I’ve gone through a few wireless routers, but surprisingly not that many as most tend to stay working for at least 3 to 4 years at bare minimum before they conk out. With Wi-Fi routers there are obvious and not-so obvious reasons as to why they fail with network connectivity. Examples of [...]
Quick quiz: What is this? Give up? It’s a mouse. Specifically, the M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Cyborg. And it’s $130 to get one, which in all honesty is worth it considering what it does as the self-proclaimed "world’s most adjustable gaming mouse". And how programmable are we talking about? 13 programmable buttons and the ability [...]
If you’re thinking about buying an external USB-powered external optical drive, because there are a few things you should know about them. Why buy an external USB-powered optical drive? a. Your existing laptop’s optical drive is busted or semi-busted (i.e. sometimes it will work and other times not). b. Your laptop has no optical drive [...]
The original DVD optical disc format specification was finalized in 1995, although test marketing of the format didn’t begin in the US until 1997. It wasn’t until around the early 2000s where DVD established itself as both a replacement to VHS video and CD-R started, and from there became the de facto optical standard. DVD [...]
At the time I write this, a "good" 120GB solid state drive will cost you $200; such an example is the Intel SSDSA2CW120G3K5, a.k.a. "320 Series". Generally speaking, nobody really needs more than 120GB for a host drive. In fact, you could get away with an 80GB easily. Remember, Windows 7 does not take up [...]
Since Intel announced the processor in Q3 2011, there’s been a lot of talk going around about the new Ivy Bridge processor. Everyone’s beaming about how powerful Intel’s new microarchitecture is, how they’ve come up with a revolutionary new design, and how the new processors could well spell doom for graphic card OEMs. Some of [...]
There are plenty of computer users who absolutely hate the glossy screen, be it a laptop panel or desktop display. And sure, it’s easy enough to tell someone “Well then, don’t buy one!”, but sometimes there’s no choice in the matter. Maybe your monitor quit on you and you needed to buy a new one [...]
Cleaning a laptop keyboard – and there’s really no other way to say this – is a serious pain in the ass. You can’t pop off the keys like you can with a normal PC keyboard because of the way they’re designed, and it’s usually ridiculously difficult to get to that one spot where all [...]
So…the unthinkable has happened. Somehow, your hard drive has just….given up. What can you do? How can you proceed from here? Is your data safe? Will you need to replace your computer? What about all your personal information? Here’s a few steps you should go through when you’re having hard drive troubles, in order to [...]
When people make PC cases, they want to make them unique. They want them to reflect who they are as people, to be a unique demonstration of their individual personality. Of course, sometimes they take this uniqueness too far. Whether as a result of eccentricity or just odd taste, the five computers on this list [...]
What is 802.11ac? It’s the wireless networking standard that will, hopefully, allow high throughput in the 5GHz band; this is a notable improvement over 802.11n-2009 (a.k.a. Wireless N), because while N does have a 5GHz mode, most people have had only a "fair" experience with that standard. More often than not, most people are only [...]
This is not another one of those "use ‘safe’ DNS to protect yourself" type of articles but rather one that concentrates on the technical advantages and disadvantages of using an alternate DNS. What does DNS actually do? DNS is Domain Name System which, simply put, is what translates web server address numbers into names. PCMech.com’s [...]
When you have a hard drive connected to your PC, that’s a local hard drive. It doesn’t matter if it’s internal or external connected via wire. It’s local. Not cloud. And if you decide to share that device out to the internet and access it that way, I’m sorry but I don’t qualify that as [...]
